Whitman at Pfaff's: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century

This essay deals with the question of why Walt Whitman was attracted to Pfaff's beer cellar for a period of approximately three years. Stansell discusses the roles the associations Whitman made at the restaurant and the literary influences he encountered played in his career.

He is listed as one of the Pfaffian writers that "have fallen into obscurity." Stansell wonders how much influence these writers weilded on Whitman's literary career (108). As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", Arnold wrote poetry (114).

Stansell notes that one of the political fights that occured at Pfaff's was between Whitman and Arnold; the two men had a falling-out over some pro-Southern remarks Arnold made (117).

He is listed as one of the Pfaffian writers that "have fallen into obscurity." Stansell wonders how much influence these writers weilded on Whitman's literary career (108). Stansell notes that Clapp "set the tone" at Pfaff's and "was known for his slashing wit and withering bon-mots: a disdain for puffery was a point of principle for his Saturday Press" (117). Stansell also writes that one can understand the "superheated conditions of literary work" in the 1850s from Clapp's correspondence to Whitman (117).

Stansell writes that "Henry Clapp himself thought bohemia to be an entirely French phenomenon, impossible to transplant to America" (110).

As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", Clapp wrote criticism (114). Stansell writes that at Pfaff's "There was verbal play with literary material: O'Brien took the idea for a sensationalist Poe-esque story about a glass eye from a story Clapp told one night" (117).

Stansell observes that the way Whitman referred to Clapp is similar to "the sort of evasion and half-glimpse which Whitman often used as a sexual code" and suggests that the two might have been lovers. Regardless of this fact, Stansell notes that Clapp was a "champion and friend" of Whitman; "a much needed ally at that time...when almost the whole press of America when it mentioned me at all treated me with derision or worse," and also, "Henry Clapp stepped out of the crowd of hooters" (119). Clapp was 44 and Whitman 39 when they met, and they "shared a general affiliation to radical reform." Clapp was born in Nantucket and had worked as an abolitionist lecturer in the 1830s, edited a temperance newsletter, and worked as the secretary to Albert Brisbane, the American Fourierist. Stansell notes that Clapp's political positions seem harder to gauge in the 1850s, as he separated his political and literary works, but notes that he attended a "star-studded convention of radicals in Rutland, Vermont" in the late 1850s -- "a gathering of spiritualists, free-thinkers, advocates of women's rights and free love, and abolitionists" (119). Stansell writes that "more salient...to Clapp's friendship with Whitman was his involvement in free love circles" and notes that he was arrested in a police raid in 1855, during a meeting of the New York Free Love League, "a discussion group of men and women presided over by the anarchist and sex radical Stephen Pearl Andrews." According to Stansell, Clapp was a prominent member of this group and spoke for them both the night of their arrest and at their trial (119-120). Stansell writes, however, that "By the time Whitman met him...Clapp sought a more protean oppositional identity than radical reform offered. He impressed others as a bohemian genius who set his entire existence against the forces of convention" (120).

Stansell discusses Howells's visit in detail, focusing on Howells's interactions with Clapp when he visited the Saturday Press (120). According to Stansell, "Howells' mistake was to be from Boston. We can view the entire account of his meeting with Clapp as materializing from his decades-long battle against the ascendancy of New York over his beloved Boston as literary capital of the country. Howells was both drawn to the literary dynamism of New York and repelled by it, and he preserved until the end of his life a nostalgia for the well-bred Boston literary elite which had enfolded him in their circle when he first migrated to the city from the Midwest in 1861. For Howells, Clapp's 'bad' qualities were inseparable from his New-York-ness: 'he embodied the new literary life of that city.' And at the heart of that life was a contempt for Boston, 'a bitterness against Boston as great as the bitterness against respectability'" (120-121).

According to Stansell, during the 1850's, the publishers and writers of New York "were just beginning to take advantage of the possibilities the new markets offered for a publishing business free of the dominance of the Boston critics and publishers. Clapp was a leader in this process, and Whitman would in some ways be its first great success. Clapp's prescience lay in his comprehension of how publicity and celebrity could, within a changing literary market, obviate the need for critical and moral approval. Whitman seemed to have something of this in mind when he noted that Clapp was the writers' avant-garde, 'our pioneer, breaking ground before the public was ready to settle.' At a moment whne some gentleman writers still shied away from advertising their books, Clapp fully grasped the democratizing features of the market. 'It is a fundamental principle in political economy,' he instructed Whitman in 1860, 'that everything succeeds if money enough is spent on it'" (121-122).

She is listed as one of the Pfaffian writers that "have fallen into obscurity." Stansell wonders how much influence these writers weilded on Whitman's literary career (108).

Stansell cites Clare as the "exception" to the muting of "libertinism and sexual adventurism" at Pfaff's. Clare was one of the few female regulars and had a child out of wedlock "in a widely publicized scandal" (110-111). Stansell describes Clare as "a George Sand-like confessional essayist and a militantly unrepentant unmarried mother" and claims that she "was enough of an urban curiousity in her own right to prompt Whitman to include her as a 'sight' in his own urban guidebook, New York Dissected" (111).

She is also mentioned as one of "the handful of women artists [who] figure in the accounts of New York Bohemia" (111). Stansell writes, "Whitman, reminiscing about Ada Clare, placed her in the context of other 'girls,' women of borderline respectability: 'It is very curious that the girls have been my sturdiest defenders, upholders. Some would say they were girls little to my credit, but I disagree with them there.' Perhaps he met some of these 'girls' at Pfaff's along with Ada Clare" (111).

Stansell also writes, "Ada Clare was a well-known confessional essayist and novelist, defiant veteran of a notorious love affair with the pianist Louis Gottschalk" (112).

As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", Clare wrote criticism (114).

Stansell notes that the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 brought Whitman some literary and critical acclaim from Emerson and others. She notes, however, that by 1858, when Whitman seemed to be returning back to the ranks of the "swarm" of writers in New York, his "great patron" Emerson was at a remove both by distance (in Boston) and in social class (116).

Stansell writes that at Pfaff's Whitman "regularly socialized with a group of young male friends -- 'the beautiful young men?' -- dubbed the 'Fred Gray Association' after one of their principals" (107).

Stansell writes that in Whitman's memories of Pfaff's, his evenings with the Fred Gray Association "conjures up animation, hilarity and 'sparkle'" (118).

As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", Gardette wrote short stories (114). Stansell writes that of the "gossip about other writers" that Whitman was exposed to at Pfaff's, he "scribbled down in his notebook the gist of a story he had heard from Charles Gardette about the rise and fall of a popular feuilletoniste, George Lippard; 'was handsome Byronic, -- commenced at 18 -- wrote sensation novels -- drank-drank-drank -- died mysteriously either of suicide or mania a potu at 25- or 6 -- a perfect wreck -- was ragged, drunk, beggarly --'" (117).

Stansell writes that Howells's writings about his 1860 visit indicate that he was "disappointed at how lackluster were the libertines" (111). Stansell discusses this visit in more detail, focusing on Howells's interactions with Clapp when he visited the Saturday Press (120). According to Stansell, "Howells' mistake was to be from Boston. We can view the entire account of his meeting with Clapp as materializing from his decades-long battle against the ascendancy of New York over his beloved Boston as literary capital of the country. Howells was both drawn to the literary dynamism of New York and repelled by it, and he preserved until the end of his life a nostalgia for the well-bred Boston literary elite which had enfolded him in their circle when he first migrated to the city from the Midwest in 1861. For Howells, Clapp's 'bad' qualities were inseparable from his New-York-ness: 'he embodied the new literary life of that city.' And at the heart of that life was a contempt for Boston, 'a bitterness against Boston as great as the bitterness against respectability'" (120-121).

Stansell notes that like Whitman and Twain, Howells started his journalistic career as a printer (114).

Howells is mentioned as one of many "urban tourists" who may have peered into its [Pfaff's] gloomy interior to take in the 'sight' [of the Bohemians]." Stansell writes, however, that this perception of a "showcase" of the bohemians at Pfaff's may have been one of the group's self-perceptions (115).

Menken was an actress. She is also mentioned as one of "the handful of women artists [who] figure in the accounts of New York Bohemia" (111).

Stansell describes Menken as a "successful actress" and writes that "in 1860 she would achieve international noteriety as the star of a melodrama in which in the last scene, clad in flesh-colored tights and a G-string, whe rode into the horizon lashed to the back of a 'fiery steed'" (112).

He is listed as one of the Pfaffian writers that "have fallen into obscurity." Stansell wonders how much influence these writers weilded on Whitman's literary career (108).

Stansell writes that for Poe and O'Brien a decade later, journalism became "a profession for the broken and disappointed of the gentlemanly classes" (114). She also describes him as "dashing" and writes that O'Brien was, "a once wealthy Irishman and Pfaffian in the late '50s who had arrived in New York with impressive letters of introduction to New York's most powerful editors, 'a large and valuable library,' 'dressing cases; pictures' a ward-robe of much splendor; and all sorts of knick knackery, such as young bachelors love to collect'" (114).

As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", O'Brien wrote short stories (114). Stansell writes that at Pfaff's "There was verbal play with literary material: O'Brien took the idea for a sensationalist Poe-esque story about a glass eye from a story Clapp told one night" (117). Stansell writes that "O'Brien...would dash into Pfaff's to sponge off freinds when he was dead broke, then dash out again with an idea for a story of knock off" (118).

Stansell describes Pfaff's as "a basement saloon in what was then central Manhattan on Broadway near Bleecker. Pfaff's, a meeting place for journalists, critics, writers and artists, had already garnered a reputation as New York's first and only 'bohemian' night spot." This restaurant would become Whitman's chief source of social interaction for about three years; there "He sat off to the side -- at least he remembered it that way years later -- and quietly absorbed the high bonhomie and bright conversation that were staples of bohemian conviviality" (107).

Stansell also notes that "Certainly imagination was at work in the designation of Pfaff's beer cellar as bohemia. Far from a pack of free-and-easy artistic vagabonds, the Pfaff's crowd consisted primarily of hard-working writers who made penurious livings from the penny press and magazines" (110).

Stansell writes, "A place like Pfaff's thus constituted quite a new kind of public space where, for all the sexaul ambiguities, unaccompanied women were not automatically subject to sexual insult. The few women mentioned in connection to Pfaff's were not prostitutes -- certainly in their own eyes and seemingly in the opinion of the men -- although their unconventionality put them well outside the pale of bougeious female respectability" (112).

Stansell writes, "Pfaff's charm as an insider's hideaway stood in interesting tension to the fact that anyone could locate it: also in this as in other respected, bohemia was inextricable from the cultural marketplace. You might expect a bohemian retreat to have been located in some obscure neighborhood where artists of modest means resided; indeed, this would be the case later with the artists' bars tucked away in the involutions of Greenwich Village. Yet at this point in its history, New York was still delivering up its urban curiousities on the standardized plan of the grid. Pfaff's location on Broadway was at the hub of New York's 'most intense cultural commerce,' as William R. Taylor has described it, extending north along the avenue from City Hall Park" (115).

In a discussion of the "superheated conditions of literary work" in the 1850s, Stansell writes, "Pfaff's was not a place where one went to wind down after a hard day's work; it was different from a workingman's saloon. Rather, it was an anteroom to the workshop, psychologically enmeshed with the affairs of writers, their bosses, their critics, friends and enemies" (117-118).

Stansell writes that Clapp incorported his "disdain for puffery" as a "point of principle for his Saturday Press" (117).

Stansell notes that while many contemporary sources claim that literary life was quite difficult in the 1850s in New York, evidence of the wide spread of New York publications, such as the Saturday Press to places like Columbus, Ohio, where it was noticed and contributed to by Howells, show that matters were improving for the New York literary world (121).

Clapp used the Saturday Press as a venue for "stirring up" issues around Leaves of Grass to promote the book. The paper seems to have discussed both the poetry and Whitman; publishing twenty items on Whitman in eleven months as well as poetic contributions, critical reviews of the work, notes about the poems, advertisements, and parodies (122).

Stansell claims that Whitman began spending time at Pfaff's after losing his job at the Brooklyn Daily Times in 1859. The restaurant became Whitman's "chief source of social intercourse" during the "long period of critical silence that followed the second edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman's tenure at the restaurant lasted about three years, ending in 1862, when Whitman left for Washington after receiving notification that his brother had been wounded. Stansell also includes Whitman's own quote to Horace Trauble about how he enjoyed being more of an observer than a participant in the activities and conversation at Pfaff's. She also notes that in 1860, those who were looking for Whitman could find him at Pfaff's, and that aside from associating with his literary acquaintances ("New York writers now entirely forgotten"), he would bring young doctors he had met while visiting the ill at New York Hospital to the bar and regularly associated with the "Fred Gray Association" (107). According to Stansell, "Whitman apparently took little part in what he called the 'rubbings and drubbings' at Pfaff's." She notes, however, that his recollections of evenings with the Fred Gray Association tended to be more active and involved stories (118).

Stansell seeks to answer the question "What was Whitman doing at Pfaff's?" in light of the biographical evidence that shows that "the late night carousing and tipsy badinage of the bohmeian years seem out of character" (108). Stansell reviews the popular viewpoints on this matter adding to Paul Zweig's theories the argument that "there are also suggestions that bohemia was the setting for more fruitful encounters which helped the poet gather his powers and emotional resources for the third edition of Leaves of Grass and a successful entry into the national literary scene" (108). Stansell also highlights Justin Kaplan's observation that the bar proved an insiprational place for writing poetry and observes that while Whitman referred to this period for him as his "New York stagnation," it was during this period that he produced a "remarkable surge of new poetry" and became a public figure on a small scale with the Boston publication of Leaves of Grass (108). Stansell notes that despite the publication of some of his fiction in the Democratic Review, Whitman was regarded as a "minor feuilletoniste, a virtual outsider in the profession of 'literariness'" in the 1850s (116). Stansell notes that the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 earned Whitman some minor acclaim, but in 1858, when he began going to Pfaff's, he appeared to be headed back towards the "swarm of collegues" in New York (116). To revise the poetry, Whitman had to forgo most other work and had to live at home with his family, depriving him of an "active audience" as he had no poet friends in New York and his family was fairly disinterested in his work (116). Stansell writes that "It was at this juncture that bohemia played a crucial role in reanimating a faltering creative venture. In gravitating to Pfaff's, Whitman put himself for the first time in a daily relationship with writers who aspired to be a kind of work beyond Grub Street. He participated -- probably for the first time -- in self-consciously literary discussion" (116-117). Stansell notes that one of the political fights that occured at Pfaff's was between Whitman and Arnold; the two men had a falling-out over some pro-Southern remarks Arnold made. Whitman would also get into a poltical argument "for defending, in his determinedly world-encompassing fashion, Queen Victoria" (117). Stansell notes that Whitman's association with other writers at Pfaff's led to an increase in "professional certainty from his new literary friendships" that were shown in 1860 when his "dealings with editors showed a new self regard and assertiveness" (118). According to Stansell, "For a writer who was fundamentally an outsider, that older mode of patronage proved unreliable. Pfaff's taught him new ways to insert himself into the stream of national literary commerce, methods and strategies that did not depend on the moral approbation of the Boston literatie and that accorded better with the sensibilities of the New York pressrooms and streets" (118-119).

Stansell notes Ezra Greenspan's argument about "the ways in which in the 1850s an economic and technological revolution in 'all the factors involved in the creation, manufacture, marketing, and consumption of printed works' reshaped literary culture and in particular, 'its most vociferous champion, Walt Whitman'" (113).

In discussing the newspaper trade, Stansell notes that Whitman started his career as a printer. She also notes that by 1845, when Whitman was 26, he had worked for ten different papers due to the constant opening and closing of the penny newspapers. Stansell also notes Greenspan's observation of "how fluid the boundaries were for Whitman and his peers between literary professional roles -- printer, reporter, editor, freelancer, periodical poet, story writer, bookseller, publisher" (114). As one of the "Pfaffian regulars" who did "serious writing along with journalism", Whitman wrote poetry (114).

Stansell writes that "Whitman's strongest memory of Pfaff's was of 'hearing the truth' about Leaves of Grass as it came straight from Printing House Square one night. While the printers and writers had waited around one Saturday evening for their pay, one of them, to pass the time, had pulled out a copy of Leaves of Grass and had given a mocking reading to the assemblage: 'read it, made light of it: the others, too; the strokes bright, witty, unsparing.' Someone then took the joke over to Pfaff's to regale the crowd there. By the time Whitman recounted the story to Traubel he was the Good Gray Poet, above vanity and resentment; he took care to assure his disciple there was no harm done...Recast, the incident became a tribute to Whitman as a 'comerado.' At the time, it must have hurt" (118).

Stansell suggests that Clapp is the party who introduced Whitman to the politics of free-love groups and their ideas; he was already familiar with several reform groups' ideas, but this new ideological set may have been a good fit for Whitman (120).

According to Stansell, during the 1850's, the publishers and writers of New York "were just beginning to take advantage of the possibilities the new markets offered for a publishing business free of the dominance of the Boston critics and publishers. Clapp was a leader in this process, and Whitman would in some ways be its first great success. Clapp's prescience lay in his comprehension of how publicity and celebrity could, within a changing literary market, obviate the need for critical and moral approval. Whitman seemed to have something of this in mind when he noted that Clapp was the writers' avant-garde, 'our pioneer, breaking ground before the public was ready to settle.' At a moment when some gentleman writers still shied away from advertising their books, Clapp fully grasped the democratizing features of the market. 'It is a fundamental principle in political economy,' he instructed Whitman in 1860, 'that everything succeeds if money enough is spent on it'" (121-122).

Stansell looks to Winter as a source about Pfaff's and writes: "Winter described a caustic collective style articulated through verbal facility, mockery and male bravado:

'Candor of judgment, indeed, relative to literary product was the inveterate custom of that Bohemian group. Unmerciful chaff pursued te perpetrator of any piece of writing that impressed those persons as trite, conventional, artificial, laboriously solemn, or insincere; and they never spared each other from the barb of ridicule. It was a salutary experience for young writers, because it habituated them to the custom not only of speaking the truth, as they understood it, about the writings of their associates, but of hearing the truth, as others understood it, about thier own productions'" (117).

Stansell also quotes Winter's description of Clapp p.120. In discussing the literary life in New York in the 1850s, Stansell quotes Winter: "a harder time for writers has not been known in our country than the time that immediately preceeded the outbreak of the Civil War" and notes that he uses the life stories of several Pfaff's regulars to illustrate this point (121).